This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...alone, the present market valuation of which is not much under 8000 million dollars, would amount to 800 million dollars. In a real panic 10 per cent declines would be bagatelles. Wall Street has ere now seen 50 per cent of its market values wiped out as with a sponge. Even sober level-headed Boston has had almost as ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...alone, the present market valuation of which is not much under 8000 million dollars, would amount to 800 million dollars. In a real panic 10 per cent declines would be bagatelles. Wall Street has ere now seen 50 per cent of its market values wiped out as with a sponge. Even sober level-headed Boston has had almost as bad an experience. When the "rot" of 1887 set in ten of Boston's representative stocks--including, of course, Atchison--had a market value of 253 million dollars. At the end of 1888 they had shrunk by 108 million dollars, or 40 per cent! A business mind will see at a glance what a power in any community a network of railways must be which employs over a million persons; commands nearly twelve thousand million dollars of capital; earns close on sixteen hundred million dollars a-year; pays out chiefly in wages over five hundred and fifty million dollars a-year; is responsible for four hundred and twenty million dollars a-year of interest on its bonded debt, and for one hundred and twenty million dollars a-year of dividends. To control even one of the huge systems forming the network is to be the financial and commercial dictator of a large section of the Republic. It carries almost absolute authority to make freight and passenger rates for all the traders in that section; to fix the wages of one-half of the working men in it; to create railroad securities ad libitum; to change, convert, and shuffle them about at will; to rule the markets in these securities, and to raise or depress market values as may suit the manipulators. No one who has not come into close contact with American railroads and their managers can realise what a tremendous force they can be when wielded with strong bold hands, such as have now got hold of them. Neither c...
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